A former German actress and model has told Swiss authorities that film director Roman Polanski raped her at his mountain chalet in 1972 when she was 15 years old, local prosecutors said on Wednesday.

A lawyer for the
84-year-old French-Polish film director said he was aware of the allegation by
Renate Langer and he dismissed it as an "absurd" attempt to generate
media attention.

Police in the
northeastern Swiss canton of St. Gallen confirmed on Wednesday they had
received a complaint from Langer, 61, last month about an alleged rape in
Polanski's house in 1972. The New York Times first reported the allegation.

Efforts by Reuters in
Germany to contact the former actress or her lawyers were not immediately
successful.

Swiss prosecutors were
being asked to consider whether prosecution of Polanski was possible under
Swiss law given the alleged crime occurred nearly a half century ago.

Switzerland has
eliminated the statute of limitations on sex crimes against children under the
age of 12.

Prosecutors in St.
Gallen said Langer had filed a complaint of rape against Polanski on Sept 26.
"The presumed act took place at the end of February 1972 in a chalet in
Gstaad," they said.

The case would be
passed on to colleagues in the canton of Bern, where Polanski has a home in the
up-scale ski resort of Gstaad.

In Poland, Polanski's
lawyer, Jan Olszewski, said he and his clients were aware of the "notification"
by Langer.

"In my opinion,
the situation is so absurd that it is hard to even comment on it. This
initiative - after 40 years - is primarily aimed at causing media noise,"
he said.

Langer is the fourth
woman to accuse Polanski publicly of sexually assaulting them when they were
teenagers.

Director Roman Polanski talks to the media as he arrives to present his movie D'apres une histoire vraie at the Zurich Film Festival in Zurich, Switzerland October 2, 2017.

Swiss authorities
arrested Polanski in 2009 on his arrival in Zurich to receive a lifetime
achievement award at a film festival. He was released two months later on bail
under "house arrest" in his Gstaad chalet.

This was for fleeing US
sentencing in 1978 for unlawful sex with 13-year-old Samantha Geimer in Los
Angeles in 1977 in a case where he pleaded guilty at the time.

In July 2010, he was
released from Swiss house arrest after authorities decided against extradition
because of potential technical faults in the US request and because he had for
years come to Switzerland in good faith.

Days later he attended
a concert given by his wife French actress and singer Emmanuelle Seigner at the
Montreux Jazz Festival. The couple also appeared on Monday at this year's
Zurich film festival.

The New York Times
quoted Langer as saying she was speaking out only now because she had read an
account of another woman who came forward in August and because her parents
were no longer alive.